Mostly California and down South.
Posted on 01/09/2007 9:18:52 AM PST by HungarianGypsy
I am wanting to write a story based on a young adult in the 1960s. Since I was born in 1973 all I really know is what I studied in books. But, I want to get beyond love beads and LSD. I want to be able to write this as it really was. I know it's said if you remember the '60s you weren't really there. But, if anyone does remember I would appreciate reading your stories and facts. Thank you.
Mostly California and down South.
Ooh, ooh!
I just remembered X-15's. I even built a model of one. If you are doing some sort of report, google 'em. It is one of the more "obscurely famous" parts of the 60's that will almost certainly get you extra credit for even being aware of.
It was an interesting precursor to the space program. Since it's very first flight was in the summer of 1959, this is most definitely a 60's thing.
Most mothers were able to stay home with their children instead of having to dump them in daycare so they could work. People let their kids play in the woods or fields or run around the neighborhood all day without worrying about whether the children would be abducted, raped, and murdered. People bought a big new American car every year or every other year. Families gathered in the evening to watch TV together, and there was so little reference to sex on TV that married TV characters had to be shown sleeping in separate beds. America was still quite segregated and blacks and whites seldom mixed socially as equals--few blacks lived in the suburbs back then, and there were fewer black professionals.
As the country became more deeply mired in Vietnam, and later as Watergate unfolded, liberalism became the triumphant philosophy, but for long years middle America tried to pretend that this was a passing trend; we denied to ourselves that when liberalism had scored certain victories, it would soon take over the popular culture too. In the late sixties and early seventies it became socially unacceptable to speak openly about a conservative political or religious belief.
I had just graduated from college in 1968. I was a nurse working in the Medical Center area of Chicago. Cook County, the VA, the U of I hospital and Rush Hospital was all in the same vicinity. A Black nurse pulled me aside and told me not to leave the hospital that night because trouble was coming. The city along Roosevelt Road, near the hospitals, was set on fire. I will never forget looking out the windows and seeing army tanks parked along the streets protecting the hospitals. I was also there when they were looking for nurses to go to Grant Park during the Democratic Convention. A lot of the nurses came back with horrible bruises after they got hit by the police batons in Grant Park when they tried to help people. My mother was a juror on that infamous trial against the police who were responsible for the death of Freddie Hampton. The verdict got thrown out. I was also one of those young people who went to downtown Chicago during parades and was snorting at the police. Those were wild times. Anyway, feel free to contact me.
Good summary. I was there.
Don't forget the lovely plastic salad bowls you got with a tank full!
The one main event of the 60's that began the decline of Western civilization was the removal of prayer in schools. The idea of a school shooting was unheard of. Schools did not need cops to keep order, because children were disclipined at home. The beginning of the 60's was much like the 50's (see Leave it to Beaver, ot Pleasantville) By the end of the 60's the counterculture revolution was in full swing. The best thing to come out of the 60's was the musclecars and music (James Marshall Hendrix).
Hippies roamed the land in huge groups as far as the eye could see and the nose could smell!
With candles.
:p
And part of what made bikinis worthwhile was that the obesity rate was far lower than it is now.
"A time of tremendous contradictions. On the one hand you had out of control radicals and hippies and on the other you saw a country that elected Nixon in 68."
More contradictions than today? Half the country thinks that the Clinton's walk on water. The other half want them under 20 feet of it.
--Most people got up to change the channel on their TV's.--
Behind the TV, a box of extra tubes. On top of the TV, a pair of pliars or wrench to turn the channels and a screwdriver to adjust the colors.
You actually HAD TV stations in North Dakota?
(just teasin!)
I remember things like going down to the 5 and 10 and buying penny candy and 45 RPM records, the cool toys like Hot Wheels, G.I. Joe, Johnny Lightning, Super Balls, Silly Putty, and Slinkys to name a few. And the occasional sonic booms that would rattle the windows.
I don't remember the 60's...
I think that was the year they found H.R. Puffinstuff dead from an overdose of H.
So sad from a beloved saturday morning TV show to a drug adict doing gay porn to get his next fix.
(PSSSS, I know H.R. Puffinstuff wasn't real, but let see how many people know!)
1. Woodstock
2. Joe
3. The Deerhunter
4. Mississippi Burning
5. Missiles of October
6. Hair 7. Born on the fourth of July
8. Easy Rider
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